Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“You two!” I yelled before my phone rang in my pocket.
“Hey,” I sighed happily, because talking to Sam Kage normally put me in a great mood and alleviated whatever other crap was going on at the time. “Wait one sec,” I told him before I shooed both animals out of Hannah’s room. I had no idea what the paint was going to do to the hardwood floor, and I didn’t want to try and figure it out at the moment.
“Jory, what’s going on? Why is Ella Gleason at our house?”
“What? No, she’s not. Her mother’s here, but not Ella.”
“Her mother’s there? Angie’s there?”
“Yeah. And how do you know?”
“Because Duncan just got a notice, so he—wait.”
“Sam?”
“Just—okay, stay on the line and don’t open the door,” he instructed, and I was suddenly treated to on-hold information regarding the US marshals’ office.
His instructions made zero sense. Don’t open the door for whom? But of course right then there was a bang on the front door, and when I went downstairs, as soon as I hit the living room, I could see policemen on my lawn out my front bay window, and there were shadows clustered around the front door that told me there were many more waiting.
“Okay,” Sam clipped out the word. “Put me on speaker and then go to the front door and give the phone to the first officer you see.”
Crossing the room, I took a breath and opened the door.
“Jory Harcourt?” the officer there barked at me.
I thrust the phone out.
He gave me a dismissive wave. “Sir, are you––”
“This is Chief Deputy Sam Kage of the Northern District of Illinois. Who am I speaking to?”
It was sort of fun to watch all the officers clustered around my front door look at the phone at the same time. I took it off speaker and passed it to the man who’d spoken to me. He turned away, talking on my phone, and at the same time a car pulled up behind the last police car and Ian Doyle, who I’d gone to dinner with on Valentine’s Day two years ago, got out of the driver’s side door, and another man I didn’t know, tall, lanky, had a kind of almost cowboy look about him, got out of the passenger side. They began up the sidewalk to my front gate, which was open from when all the officers came through. Angie Gleason was standing in a circle of three officers, shrieking at them.
The officers parted like the Red Sea for Moses as Ian came up the steps, slipping around the guy still on the phone with Sam, and stepped in front of me, basically shielding me from all the officers.
I had to tip my head back to meet his gaze, as close as he was to me, and I was struck, as I was the first time I ever met him, by how clear blue his eyes were. He was handsome, even with the furrow of his brows I was getting.
“Are you all right? Did anyone try and force their way into the house or touch you?”
“No,” I assured him, smiling.
He nodded, taking a quick breath before he turned, still in front of me, making it impossible to see over or around him unless I moved.
“Gentlemen, you need to disperse,” Ian told them, his voice with that same thread of warning Sam’s had at times. It was the “don’t push me or ask questions” tone that I was not at all a fan of. “Unfortunately, you weren’t given all the pertinent information.”
It wasn’t “swatting.” Angie Gleason wasn’t guilty of calling in to say that I had kidnapped her daughter or was holding her hostage, but she had deceived CPD into coming to my house to investigate me. It was still a false report, and I wondered how much trouble Angie was in.
Ian stepped aside suddenly, and the officer who’d borrowed my phone passed it back, saying he apologized for the misunderstanding.
“Not your fault,” I assured him.
He nodded and turned just as a pale pink Volkswagen bug rolled into my driveway. Kola got out of the passenger side as Ella Gleason put the car in park, killed the motor, and got out as well, standing with the driver’s side door in front of her. The second Kola reached the fence, Angie lunged at him, but before I could even yell, the guy who came with Ian was there, stepping in front of Kola, shielding him, so that Angie sort of bounced off his chest and into the female officer behind her.
“What did you do to my daughter?!” she screamed at Kola. “Did you knock her up, you disgusting piece of filth?”
Ian turned to me then. “Maybe I should bring everyone inside, huh?”
Apparently, this was the only solution. “That would be great.”
Ten minutes later, me, Kola, Angie, and Ella were in my living room sitting down around the coffee table. Ian and Deputy US Marshal Josiah Redeker had left after Angie promised not to assault me. It was funny that they patted her down and searched her purse to make certain she didn’t have a weapon before they departed.